I’m just back from a big writer’s conference in LA, where I spoke on a panel.  Let me tell you, there’s nothing more fun than hanging around 5,000 other people who love to talk about writing and words and books and tricks of the trade. That being said, I thought I’d share with you today a segment from the memoir I’ve been working on forever and a day.

How was it that I had come to believe that Iranian women were virgins until they married and that their general demeanor, thereafter, could make even the Puritans seem cheap and tawdry by comparison? How could I have been so wrong to think that sex would be a totally taboo topic of conversation? I was shocked to discover that I was the Puritanical Pilgrim among the Wampanoag, just off the Mayflower in my grey woolens and bonnet. This coming from someone who, from age eleven on, had considered herself a sophisticate in the sex department because she’d read The Happy Hooker and seen that precursor to Debbie Does Dallas. Who’d played slap and tickle with her eighth grade science teacher, and some older man from church, then fucked her friend’s softball coach, and that old guy from China, and, and, and.

I couldn’t picture Hakim married to any one of them.

Not sad Um-Roya, who was much too old for him anyway, who had six kids by his brother, even though the sense of honoring Latif by taking on his responsibilities would have probably appealed to him.

Not the cousins who didn’t know the difference between English and German.

Not the one digging around in my private life.

Beyond the obvious genetic pitfalls of such a union, and the family tree were just rife with them, these women, the very women against whom I’d been measured since the beginning of our relationship, were way too simple for Hakim.

After dinner and sex, what on earth would they have had to talk about? They couldn’t attempt to explain, for Hakim’s amusement, why the addition of sugar would make a punch bowl foam. They wouldn’t understand the work issues he was facing; the frustration he felt because he couldn’t get cryogenic equipment for his new lab, or a high-powered laser, because foreign companies didn’t cotton to requisition forms that began: “In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful.” They wouldn’t laugh when he asked, “What happened after the big bang?”,then answered, “The big smoke.” Not without fifteen years worth of explanation. Although, come to think of it, they would have loved the sexual innuendo.

“I’m tired,” I told Hakim as he ceremonially washed his face, feet, and hands in the sink for another round of prayer. “When are we going to go home?”

“We just got here,” he said without looking my way. “We’ve only got one more week.”

“I know that. But I’m tired. You’re gone all the time and I have no one to talk to.” The tiled walls of the bathroom echoed with the sound of our voices as Iman, still naked from her bath, squirmed on my hip.

Hakim lifted his arms from the basin and then held them up like a scrubbed surgeon waiting for his gloves. Water trickled down his forearms. The rolled up sleeves of his dish-dasha darkened with the moisture. He turned to me then and said, “What are you talking about? These people love you. Everyone wants to talk to you. Everyone wants to be your friend. Everyone wants to take care of you. What are you complaining about? Why can’t you just relax and go with the flow?” He wasn’t so much annoyed as confused. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t having fun.

Hakim was in his element. Lots of people coming and going at odd hours, three squares a day, continually flowing tea. He wasn’t bothered by the lack of privacy, particularly at night, when every room in the place was crammed full of sleeping forms. Or by the squadrons of mosquitoes that, after an industrious night of blood sucking, punched the clock at sunrise only to be replaced by the day shift’s cloud of black flies.

“Everyone is lovely,” I said. “I’m not blaming them. It’s just…well…we have nothing in common. We have nothing to talk about. Nobody does anything here. Nobody even wants to go outside for a walk. All we do is eat one meal, and then show up at someone else’s place for another.” I pulled Iman closer and rubbed at a bug bite on her thigh. I felt guilty for being frazzled and out of place. “I can’t cope with so many people. I feel like I’m drowning. You’re gone and I’m stuck in a room with forty-five women who want to explore our sex life.” Hakim laughed. “What’s so funny?” I sniffed.

“You’re interesting to them, Sweetheart. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

I looked down at the floor and kicked at a broken patch of tiles with the bathroom sandal. “I miss you,” I said. “You’re never around and I feel like you’ve just chucked me here while you go off and play. I just need a little time with you. I’m really lonely here without you.”

He didn’t reach for me because my touch would have defiled his prayers, made them unacceptable to God. Instead, he softened his voice. “I know I’m asking a lot of you.” He willed me to look him in the eye, to hold his gaze. “I just need you to try and understand my position. I’ve been gone a long time. There are people I need to see, things I’ve got to do. I need you to hang in there.” His family had been living in relative squalor the entire time Hakim had been pursuing his PhD and residing in the United States. The disparity in living conditions, in the opportunities afforded him, were just two of the cement sacks of guilt Hakim carted around on his shoulders. While his family had suffered one loss after another during the war, he’d had his feet propped up on a coffee table, his nose in a pile of books. They’d insisted that he could do more good by finishing his studies, but he’d never really believed them. Iranians never told family members the truth if they were too far away from the hive; forced to cope with bad news on their own. Now it was time for Hakim to pay back the debt he owed his family. He would do whatever it took to make their lives easier, regardless of the cost.

“We’ll spend some time together tonight, I promise.”

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